6 Tools To Create Beautiful Image Quotes

If you’ve been using social media for a while, you’ve probably noticed the explosion of image quotes on platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook.

Inspirational sayings and meaningful quotes about success, life, love etc have the uncanny ability to touch us in just a few words because they express what we all think, feel, hope, fear and desire in life. This is probably also why they tend to go viral.

But in today’s fast-paced world, pictures, not just words, are becoming the new way to communicate.

Besides the wisdom and the feel-good factor, I believe there are actually 3 important reasons why every business must add image quotes to their marketing mix.

Why You Should Create Image Quotes

1. Visual content marketing was the biggest trend in 2012 and shows no signs of slowing down. According to Hubspot over 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day and they typically get 53% more likes and 104% more comments than an average post.

Quote images are one of the easiest ways to add a visual element to your posts.

www.flickr.com/photos/helgabj

2. Over 65% of us describe ourselves as visual learners. This means that most of us find it easier to process information that is in the form of images, pictures, photos, maps and graphs.

In other words, if you want to connect with your audience, you should “tell” less and “show” more.

3. Image quotes are a powerful way to communicate the values and vision of your business and they can be tailored to suit any niche. I covered this strategy in detail in my post about creating image quotes on Pinterest.

But if you are a relationship coach, rather than using generic inspirational quotes it would be more beneficial to create quotes about love and romance.

Similarly, a church should promote Bible quotes or Christian quotes, a gym health and fitness quotes, whilst a travel agency could inspire their audience with motivational quotes and sayings about travel, adventure and freedom.

Just one image quote has the potential to go viral and drive tons of traffic to your site, especially if you add your URL at the bottom.

Here’s an example of one quote that I created recently that was shared dozens of time on Facebook and repinned over 200 times on Pinterest.

I hope you’re beginning to see that image quotes are an easy way to harness the trend for visual content, enjoy high rates of engagement from your audience and generate traffic.

It only takes an hour a week and you can also assign this task to your assistant. So let’s get started!

How To Create Beautiful Image Quotes

First you need to research uplifting quotes and sayings and then organize them into a master template. I use an Excel spreadsheet but you can also use a Word document or text file.

Next, go to a site like Brainy Quote or Quote Garden, which have thousands of inspirational sayings and wise quotes that you can either trawl through manually or search by topic or author.

If you want to get really specific then you could also Google “your keyword + quote.”

Add the quotes with the author name to your master document, making sure you remove any formatting. It shouldn’t take you long to collect your first 50 or 100, which is enough to start with to produce a motivational quote of the day for a couple of months.

The next step is to decide which free image editor you are going to use to create your picture quotes. Here’s my list of the top 6 tools to help you create image quotes and sayings along with the reasons why I like them.

Top 6 Tools To Create Image Quotes

PicMonkey is a fantastic free online image editor and is the best all-round choice if you want to edit your pictures without investing in Photoshop.

There’s no obligation to register in order to use the free version, which is adequate for most people. The premium version costs $5 a month and gives you more effects, fonts and design templates so it’s designed for the power user.

You don’t need to be tech-savvy or particularly creative to use PicMonkey because it has dozens of features to help you create beautiful picture quotes, do quick touch ups to your photos, resize images and add text.

I suggest you start with the free version and see how you get on.

Just upload a picture of your choice to the dashboard or use one from this list of free image sources, add a quote from your list and save the image to your desktop.

I love PicMonkey and use it to create and edit my pictures. I highly recommend it for creating image quotes especially for Pinterest, where many of my picture quotes and sayings have gone viral.

Pinwords is another free online editing tool for creating image quotes. It is less sophisticated than PicMonkey and still in beta but it’s great for when you are in a hurry.

Like PicMonkey, Pinwords lets you overlay notes, sayings, captions, poetry, aspirations and quotes on top of images in seconds.

The key difference between the two (apart from the lack of features) is that Pinwords offers a handy selection of ready-made backgrounds so you don’t need to upload your own photos. But when it comes to adding text, you are restricted to one of just 6 font styles or “themes.”

LiveLuvCreate is an online community of users who search and share each others’ images. It also happens to be a free image editor.

LivLuvCreate is a great resource for not only creating beautiful image quotes but also for connecting with a younger, predominantly female audience who love to share content and may not otherwise find you. Some of my most popular image quotes have been created on this nifty service and I have to admit I’m a fan.

Don’t be put off by the cluttered homepage, just head straight for the Images page and scroll down to Create. Choose a layout from the 4 templates. I recommend the plain large square for inspirational pictures and quotes.

Then select a background from one of the 4 options – their pre-made options, your Facebook profile, your desktop or by using the LivLuvCreate plugin.

A good place to start for creating image quotes and sayings is the pre-made option.

Here you will find ready-made images in several categories. They are regularly updated and some of them are pretty good.

Just use your imagination, add a suitable motivational saying and within seconds you will have a beautiful image quote.

You’ve probably seen the Keep Calm images all over Pinterest, Tumblr and Facebook but did you know that they were originally created by the British government to boost public morale during wartime? They were revived in 2000 and have become hugely popular.

Now you can design your own Keep Calm style images using the free Keep Calm-O-Matic tool, made by Reincubate, a British technology company.

Just click on Create A Poster and you will be presented with several options.

Decide on your witty quote or saying and add it to the 5 fields on the left-hand side. Choose the logo, the color of the background and text, and your preferred font style.

You can also adjust the font size as well as the dimensions of the image, but if you want to stay true to the original then it’s best to stick with the default settings.

Then hit Generate My Poster and share across your social media profiles or save to your desktop.

Quozio is a popular free tool for creating image quotes and sayings on the fly using ready-made backgrounds and styles that can be instantly shared to Facebook, Pinterest or via email.

Although the backgrounds are very versatile and look great, there aren’t nearly enough of them. So don’t be surprised if you start seeing similar image quotes appearing on your Facebook or Pinterest feed.

One feature that I do like about Quozio however is its neat bookmarklet. Just drag it to your browser’s bookmark bar to install it, then highlight text on any webpage (including your own website!) and click the bookmarklet to quickly create an image quote.

That said, this tool is ideal for creating funny ecards using witty quotes, sayings and observations about life, like this one.

Final Words

What are you thoughts on the rise of visual marketing? Have you used any of these free tools to create images of quotes and sayings? Are there any good tools that I’ve missed out? Please comment and share below.

Comments

Great post and timely too! Creating image quotes has been on my list of things to do, but I’ve been neglecting it since I knew I’d need to do some research to figure it out. Now you’ve provided a handy synopsis for me! Huge thank you! Gonna go collect my first 100 inspiring self-improvement quotes.

Hi Tehmina. Thanks for this list. I’m just unsure about where to get pictures for my quotes without getting into trouble. I know I could use my own pictures, but what if I run out of pictures, where could I legally get pictures from to use for my picture quotes? Thanks

Wow, this is fantastic! I made my first picture quote yesterday for my post and I am so proud of it (http://www.pinterest.com/pin/246853623299243025/)! I never even thought it possible! Thanks so much for these wonderful tips. I signed up for your newsletter yesterday. Glad I found your blog.